Courageous Conversation: Survivor Panel Describes the Spiritual Impacts of Sexual Abuse
Awake’s first Courageous Conversation of the 2023-24 season featured four victim-survivors who shared powerful stories of how they came to connect with God and to courageously undertake a long journey of healing.
“Spiritual Trauma: Victim-Survivors on the Hidden Impact of Sexual Abuse” featured Elsie Boudreau, a Yupik Alaska Native and member of the Algaaciq tribe and a wife, mother, grandmother, and social worker; Mary Dispenza, an educator, author, and leader of support groups for those abused by religious sisters; Linda Ochs, a recent retiree from parish work and current participant in Awake’s Survivor Circles; and Tim Ehlinger, a recently retired professor from the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee who participates in a support group for men who have experienced sexual abuse and serves as a member of Awake’s Courageous Conversation Team. A recording of this discussion is available below.
ABUSE AND THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY
Dispenza kept her abuse secret for decades. That withdrawal led her to confide in God, “and that’s the moment when God became my friend, my constant companion,” she said. “From that day on, I loved God. And that’s been the good news for me…[N]obody could take that from me. And still today, God is my rock and walks with me.”
Boudreau’s identity is deeply intertwined with her spirituality and Yupik heritage. When she uses her Yupik name, Apugen, “I feel like I sit stronger; it vibrates through every fiber of my being.” She loved her village where everyone was Catholic and Yupik, and the Church was the center of village life. Having been abused by a priest from age 10 until 19, she, like Dispenza, did not reveal the abuse until many years later. When she did, she experienced both a rebirth but also much grief. “It was almost like shedding old skin,” she said. “My skin was Catholic and I had to shed that.” Boudreau no longer identifies as Catholic and finds solace in the Yupik understanding of God as a being “greater than any of us,” she explained. “We’re all related, and we’re interconnected in a way that is greater than religion.” For her, spirituality “is really about connection.”
Ochs was active in her faith community as a young person. Her experience of spiritual abuse was rooted in “the fact that my abuser was a priest…he was the spiritual father. I was the spiritual daughter,” she said. “That alone carries a lot of power [and] made me vulnerable even at the age of 18.” At the same time, “I really looked at myself as a sinner, even though he was the one who kept perpetrating,” she said. The perpetrator died when Ochs was 35, but the situation “really affected the way I looked at myself as a Catholic, as a daughter of God.”
Ehlinger’s young life was characterized by a loving family and strong Catholic community. His perpetrator manipulated that trust by abusing him at a summer camp when he was 14. “At that moment, all…that had been so central to who I was, was blown up,” he said. “The fiber and fabric of what had brought me to that place – that people are good, that community is where we discover God – was just gone.” Ehlinger compared his withdrawal process to entering a cocoon, “and that cocoon allowed me to continue to function.” Today he has discovered a life-giving spirituality.
HOW ABUSE SHAPED THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
Ochs’ recovery has involved a “kind of push-pull relationship” with God. She knew that the abuse was the perpetrator’s fault – and not God’s – but she felt anger toward God because “I felt alone for so long.” She asked God hard questions: “Where are you? Why are you not healing me?” Grappling with those questions she realized that healing is a journey, and “and I’m now at the point where I can pray again,” she explained.
When Boudreau gave herself permission to express anger at God for allowing the abuse, she felt “energy and freedom to look at” what happened and to start the healing journey. She recognized that the priests in her village are not God, and when she prayed using the Yupik word for God she felt closely held and supported, an experience that “saved my life.” Healing for her is a process where she can feel held by God while also acknowledging the abuse and taking steps for protection.
The Conversation Continues. Join Us!
Don’t miss Part 2 of this Courageous Conversation, 7 pm Central on Thursday, Sept. 28. Attendees will break into small groups to discuss the ideas shared by the panelists in Part 1. To join us, please complete the registration for Part 2 and watch the video recording before you attend. See you on Thursday!
WHAT HAS HELPED THEIR HEALING
In the aftermath of his abuse, a teenaged Ehlinger found refuge in music. When he woke in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, he would take his guitar to the basement to play songs. “In that cocoon, I felt something,” he remembered. “I feel God through the Spirit, and that Spirit spoke to me as [I was] playing my guitar and I felt that reconnection.” As an adult, he joined a music group with others, “blessed and broken in different ways,” on their own healing journeys. “I felt the Spirit within that small community, sheltered from the institutional church,” he said, “and [I knew] that God was with me.”
Similarly, Dispenza described finding hope in the people who belong to organizations like Awake and SNAP, “who are working very hard to change what’s wrong about the Catholic Church and to find the good.” She accompanies survivors of abuse by nuns who come forward “to speak, to be heard, to find some sort of justice in the journey.” While she finds comfort in her rosary, she no longer identifies as a Catholic, and avoids trying to change the Catholic Church. Instead, she focuses on helping others to “heal, change their lives… and find love and joy,” she said.
Ehlinger explained that although he avoids certain aspects of the Catholic Church, he identifies strongly with the Catholic sense of finding God in ourselves and in each other. The experience of small communities has nurtured his faith. Similarly, Ochs has found empathy and safety in a small women’s faith-sharing group. She also finds comfort in meeting Christ directly in the Eucharist and in confession, as well as in Gregorian chant and conversing with a spiritual director. She admitted that she feels more peaceful since retiring from her parish job, and she also works to avoid news articles about the Catholic Church.
RESPONDING TO AUDIENCE QUESTIONS
When an audience member asked the panelists about images of God that have felt helpful to them, Ochs referred to the hemorrhaging woman reaching out to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, from the eighth chapter of Luke. “That gospel story has meant the most to me over the years because of [my] long suffering… and how I’ve reached out to Jesus for healing, and for how marginalized I have felt,” she said. As a Yupik, Boudreau sees the entire human family and the living earth as an image of God. She said that when she meditates, “I’m in the mountains, and there’s trees and water and flowers all around, and I’m with Jesus.”
When asked what Catholic leaders should know about the spiritual impacts of abuse, the panelists shared a range of powerful ideas. Ochs observed that because Catholic leaders hold enormous power, the community often sides with priest-perpetrators rather than victims. She also noted that homilies can be a source of harm when they promote simplistic portrayals of complicated subjects such as forgiveness and communicate misunderstandings of what abuse victims have endured.
Dispenza suggested that Church leaders ask this question of victim-survivors: “What do you need?” Boudreau called for leaders to believe victim-survivors when they come forward and to demonstrate that belief by their actions. Ehlinger stated his belief that the Catholic Church needs to change at a deep cultural level. Healing will require “profound contrition and recognition by the Church of their role in spiritual trauma,” he said. “It’s going to require a full embodiment of a healing culture…for generations to come.”
—Anselma Dolcich-Ashley, Guest Writer
